Now I remember why I like them. In today's editorial, the current situation in Israel.

Yet again it is ordinary Palestinians who will be the biggest losers in the latest outrage by terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Israeli missiles knocked out 60 per cent of Gaza's electricity – a fresh blow for a people already reeling under the move by Western nations to cut off funds to the Hamas administration. As they light candles and try to cook without power they will perhaps recall the votes they cast in the January election.

Then global warming.

When The Philippines' Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it threw out vast amounts of ozone-depleting greenhouse gases. But the particles it cast skyward also lowered temperatures.

The story of this man is both inspiring and humbling. It also makes one feel truly grateful that we live in such comfort and safety, that we may never be called to prevail against such evil.

It was in the night when I saw a number of torches flash at me. I was commanded to lie down facing the ground. As I did so, the rebels began raiding other houses around me.

They arrested many - tying, and lying the victims on the ground in three lines. Two men were tied and forced onto the ground where their heads were joined together. The rebels tried to force me to pick up a log and hit their heads but I refused so one came for me with a knife and cut off my left ear. He accused me of being a government soldier and said that I would be finished off if I failed to smash their heads.

But then, they started smashing the people's heads themselves. I was put in the middle as they smashed the people's heads. At about 0700 in the morning, they led 35 of us into the bush. About five kms (approximately three miles) from the scene they began taunting me, saying that I was big-headed, and because I refused to respect them I would be cooked alive.

They kept on beating us and they denied food or water from us. We complained saying we were hungry and thirsty. They stopped raping the women that were in our group and acted as though they were going to let us eat and drink. The ladies were forced to boil water in a big tin.

Shortly after this they announced that we would eat the government soldier - supposedly, me. For a long time, the rebels took turns at beating us men with hot metal, and raping the girls. I was already spiritually dead.

They returned to me at some point and re-tied me before chopping off my lips. They then cut off my right ear and my nose. I was bleeding. I could not cry anymore and for two days I couldn't drink water.

The rebels debated for two days whether or not I was to be killed. They told me I was a bad omen and so must suffer. My wounds had begun to rot. The smell was so bad. But still they refused me any treatment.

Then on the seventh day, because I never expected to live, I insulted their commander in the hope that in revenge he would kill me. He just ordered his soldiers to cut off my hands. They did.

That evening I remember seeing my fellow female abductees crying. One of them had been killed and another had had her breast cut off. The rebels kept telling me that I would soon be dead. They picked out two of the starving, tired girls that could hardly even walk from being repeatedly raped and ordered them to take me home.

The three of us were helpless. The girls were crying, inconsolably, when some government soldiers found us following a further night spent out in the open. They took us straight to the nearest hospital where we received treatment. On reaching hospital, my wife came to see me with my parents, relatives and friends.

Ochola John was deformed by rebels from Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army

They found it hard to see me as a human being. I was rotting, smelly and deformed. My wife started taking care of me in the hospital. I had asked her to leave me alone, explaining that because I was deformed, I couldn't be her husband anymore.

She refused. Over and over she rejected my request, saying that the baby she was carrying for us, the child we were expecting, needed a father. She kept saying that I hadn't asked to be deformed like that and someday God would let me know why I had been put through such an ordeal. My wife, Grace, with time helped to suppress my terrible feelings and thoughts.

The high court, in a 5-3 vote, said the administration violated the Geneva Conventions and the US military code of justice in ordering a military tribunal to prosecute Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni and former driver for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

What an interesting take on the Geneva Conventions. A wrong take, actually. Deliberately wrong? I’d say so.

US President George W Bush said that a US Supreme Court ruling on the fate of Guantanamo Bay detainees would not set any suspected terrorists free and that he still hoped to try them in military courts.

"We will analyse the decision. To the extent that the Congress is given any latitude to develop a way forward using military tribunals, we will work with them," said Mr Bush. "I want to find a way forward."

I think the best way forward is to now modify the way we deal with captured enemy combatants who don’t use uniforms, effectively hiding behind civilian populations and so directly placing them in danger (precisely what it was the Geneva Convention was seeking to discourage, actually, in its harsh agreed treatment of precisely that).

By extending Geneva Convention protections to illegal, non-uniformed combatants, the Supreme Court has violated not only the spirit, but the letter of the Conventions. The clauses about non-protection of illegal combatants are specifically designed to protect civilians, from terrorists and brigands who would otherwise hide among civilian populations to escape justice. The harshest penalties are allowed for those who abuse this convention, up to and including summary execution on the field of battle.

Update II: the words of one of the dissenting Justices:

For the reasons set forth in JUSTICE SCALIA’s dissent, it is clear that this Court lacks jurisdiction to entertain petitioner’s claims, see ante, at 1–11. The Court having concluded otherwise, it is appropriate to respond to the Court’s resolution of the merits of petitioner’s claims because its opinion openly flouts our well-established duty to respect the Executive’s judgment in matters of military operations and foreign affairs. The Court’s evident belief that it is qualified to pass on the “[m]ilitary necessity,” ante, at 48, of the Commander in Chief’s decision to employ a particular form of force against our enemies is so antithetical to our constitutional structure that it simply cannot go unanswered.

I guess he means "epithet". An epitaph is an inscription on a tomb. He can't spell "ingrained", either. And these elementary mistakes appear in a college newspaper at that! I guess that's what you get from an educational system dominated by Leftists who don't believe in standards.

I guess the article proves that if you want to be offended, you will be. The numbers were apparently randomly generated by the Idaho government computer. They obligingly withdrew the plate when they heard from the whiner.

Update

A reader notes that N166ER is registered as an aircraft tail number with the FAA. See here

Wind farms don't live up to the hype that they're an environmental saviour, [Australian] federal agriculture minister Peter McGauran says. Mr McGauran's first voiced his concerns in a speech to dairy farmers earlier this week, contrasting with federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell's position in support of wind energy. "Wind farms don't live up to the hype that they're the environmental saviour and a serious alternate energy source," Mr McGauran told ABC radio today.

However, Renewable Energy Generators of Australia chief Susan Jeans said Mr McGauran's comments were out of line. "I suspect it's best that we let the environment minister comment on matters relating to renewable energy," Ms Jeans told ABC radio.

Mr McGauran said the giant propellers devalued land. "The deleterious affect they can have on their neighbours is so serious it means that they should not be allowed to get away with the exaggerated claim," he said. "Their claims are fraudulent in regard to the environmental and energy terms." " ... these wind farms are not producing any electricity of any measurable amount and because they are having such an affect on rural communities they should only be permitted where the community is ... accepting of them."

The IDF confirmed early Thursday a report the Popular Resistance Committees issued from Gaza that it had executed Eliyahu Asheri, 18, of Itamar, who was kidnapped earlier this week in the West Bank.

IDF combat engineers and Shin Bet agents, acting on intelligence, found Asheri's body Wednesday night in an abandoned car in an open field outside of Ramallah. The youth had been shot in the head, and initial findings indicated that he may have been killed as early as Sunday.

Take note of the above statement, he may have been killed on sunday. But that doesn't stop the treacherous vermin from trying to exploit it, they know very well how to play the media.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the Hamas-affiliated PRC told Al-Jazeera that Asheri would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if the IDF operation in Gaza did not stop. "Our patience is running out," he said.

Regardless of what may be true of the group, we cannot assume the same for every individual in that group. So when I comment about things in Jews as a whole that I like (such as high IQ and high drive) and when I point to things in Africans as a group that I dislike (such as low IQ and high propensity to criminality) that does not at all imply that I advocate treating all the individuals in that group in the same way. Otherwise how would it be that the person I quote most often in my blogging is an American black -- Thomas Sowell? I clearly don't condemn him in any way.

And when it comes to immigration, the Australian government has long embraced a policy which recognizes the importance of the individual. It abandoned the White Australia policy in the 1960s and instituted a selective immigration policy that chose people on largely educational and occupational criteria. People with a good education or useful trade skills were the ones principally selected as immigrants, regardless of whether they were black, white or brindle. And that is exactly the policy that I support. Pretty mainstream, Huh?

The Australian government, however, also has a refugee intake as well as a selective immigration intake. Most people who have entered Australia in the refugee category have been East Asians, who, as a group, have generally sterling qualities and who have hence added to Australian society rather than detracted from it. The low level of selectivity in admitting such people has done no harm overall. Unfortunately, two generally trouble-prone groups (Lebanese Muslims and East Africans) have also entered Australia in considerable numbers in the (minimally selective) "refugee" category. And they have certainly become a burden rather than an asset.

Official references to this are very guarded, however. It is therefore interesting to note an official reference to it by the Premier of NSW in the Hansard of the NSW Legislative Assembly (8 March 2006, Pages 43 -, article 11). He does of course blame the Federal government for the crime-rate rather than those who perpetrate it but he is a Leftist after all. Excerpt below:

"Despite the Commonwealth's failure, the State government will continue to provide a high-quality, targeted ESL program as part of its equity provision in New South Wales government schools-our commitment to equity. Low English ability is a direct contributor to high unemployment rates and is a massive barrier to becoming part of the Australian community. The situation is further exacerbated by the Commonwealth exiting the field of providing interpreter services. On 1 July 2005 the Commonwealth completely abandoned its commitment to providing interpreter services for those accessing community services. This has had a massive impact on those trying to access community services in New South Wales. All this results in social alienation and, inevitably, increased crime rates.

I am advised by NSW Police that a number of local area commands have expressed concern in recent months about the increasing number of recent arrivals from African countries. The concern is not about the African refugees per se; it is about refugees not being adequately supported during their settlement period and thus beginning to feature in crime statistics-both as victims and as offenders. The police are responding to this at the individual local area command level and have recently begun workshops with the Sudanese community as part of a crime prevention and education strategy. About half of the recent 5,000 arrivals have settled in Blacktown. A further 1,500 live in Newcastle and Coffs Harbour. I am advised that local area commanders have to divert police resources to deal with problems associated with these refugees. There are also reports of more serious crime associated with gangs of young men from African communities. It is not the core business of the New South Wales health system for the New South Wales police force to spend time and resources picking up the ball dropped by Canberra.

So what is my view of that? It is starkly simple. I think there should be much the same individual selectivity in admitting refugees as there is in admitting other immigrants. Highly educated East Africans (for instance) should be admitted and illiterate East Africans should not be admitted.

In that respect I am not mainstream. Australians are generally kind-hearted people who approve of giving refuge to people in dire circumstances overseas and the media coverup about the result of doing that in a largely non-selective way lulls most Australians into thinking that the intake concerned poses no threat to their lives and welfare. So for that reason, I do all I can to publicize what a problem group Africans generally are -- so that the need for selectivity in admitting them will come to be recognized. But Africans who are held to the same standards as other people I have no problem with.

I appreciate my fellow Anglo-Australians as being one of the world's most peacable and pleasant populations but that does not imply much about how I respond to individual Australians. Some Australians are not peacable and pleasant and I respond to them unfavourably. Most Indians ARE peacable and pleasant and I respond to them favourably. It is peacableness and pleasantness (for instance) that I respond favourably to -- regardless of whether the person concerned is black, white or brindle.

And I might note that the only two Jews who appear in my personal life from time to time are both great gentlemen. So any adverse treatment of them just because they are Jews I would resist with might and main.

I liked the following email from an American reader in response to my recent posts about attempted flag-banning in England:

"This reminds me of a very similar story here in America. Shortly after I moved to Colorado in 2001, the far left lunatics and ne'er-do-wells who make up the populace of Boulder Colorado decided that the American Flag was a symbol of oppression and that is should not be flown over any municipal building. In particular, the colors were struck from flying on the pole in front of the library where the librarian was quoted as saying that the American flag was such an oppressive symbol as to be unfit for the children using the library to see.

Meanwhile throughout the library was an art exhibit which consisted of large, papier mache penises, painted with gay pride themes and suspended by wire from the ceiling. The art exhibit was fought over in court and was allowed to be erected (no pun intended) because it fell under the Freedom of Speech clause in the First Amendment, and rightly so, but when a group of veterans filed suit to have the flag raised outside, it was shot down, get this, on the same principle. The librarian was making yet another Free Speech statement by NOT flying the flag!

I'm both proud and nauseated by the outcome. I'm proud I live in a country where freedom of speech is still alive. I'm nauseated that it can be manipulated so easily by the left-wing flotsam and jetsam of society who find doing so a game. I'm proud that so many men and women put on a uniform every day to ensure these freedoms (as I have and know they do in the U.K. and Australia.) And, I'm nauseated by what the liberal rabble does with those freedoms.

In the end, sanity prevailed; well, forced sanity. The federal government stepped in and gently reminded the librarian that the Boulder Municipal Library System was the recipient of a large bundle of federal grant money annually, and that if they would like to continue to receive those funds, the flag really needs to be flying in front of the building. It is flying there today.

Below is a report on the British scene:

The politically correct brigade have been doing all they can to stop English people displaying their flag. But the ordinary people of England are not having it:

"From Downing Street to the bleakest housing estate, from David Cameron's bike to the dirtiest white van, the flag of St George is fluttering optimistically once again. World Cup fever has arrived, and anything with the red cross of England on it is selling fast....

Flag manufacturers said yesterday that demand was double that of four years ago in the build-up to the last tournament...

Even the Prime Minister has adopted it. Mr Blair's spokesman confirmed yesterday: "We will fly the flag on match days due to the special nature of the occasion.

Australia's top union official is under fire for saying it would be good if unions ran the country as they had done in the past. On the eve of a union rally that will shut down Melbourne today, ACTU secretary Greg Combet admitted making the remark to a group of South Australian unionists. "I recall we used to run the country and it would not be a bad thing if we did again," he said.

Prime Minister John Howard said the union chief had revealed the union movement's true motives. "It's not about the welfare of unionists, it's not about getting the unemployed back into work, it's not about boosting their real wages. It's about union power," he said. Mr Howard said the unions had bullied Labor into promising to axe Australian Workplace Agreements.

Mr Combet defended the comment, saying it was taken out of context. "The comments I made were a joke and a light-hearted aside to a large group of people," he said. He accused the Government of dredging up old claims about union power to justify its IR changes. But the lapse could not have come at a worse time for the unions, with disruptive rallies across the nation today over industrial relations changes. Trades Hall has vowed to gridlock Melbourne, with 100,000 unionists in the streets....

This is the result of their soft on drugs, soft on crime, anti death penalty, anti corporal punishment, no cane in schools, prison for rehabilitation instead of punishment, diminished responsibility because of upbringing/childhood/drunk/drugged/ethnicity social policies.

A PERTH community has rallied around the shattered family of a "sweet and affectionate" eight-year-old schoolgirl who was found murdered in a shopping centre toilet.

Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia-Shu's naked body was found by her 14-year-old brother on Monday, 10 minutes after she went to the toilet at the Livingston Market Place shopping centre in Canning Vale, in Perth's south.

A 21-year-old man from the Canning Vale area has been charged with wilful murder, sexual penetration of a child, and deprivation of liberty.

There is little more to add. This is the result of 30 years of leftists making excuses for criminals, failing to hold them accountable for their own actions, stripping the police of their power to treat criminal shitbags like shitbags, removing the harshest of punishment for crimes in the interest of rehabilitating criminals, and removing the ability of parents to properly discipline their children.

In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: "I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard."

For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other than "If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally."

Parade magazine, the Sunday newspaper supplement, has joined the global-warming alarmists with a cover story titled "Why You Can't Ignore the Changing Climate." Author Eugene Linden writes:

From the Fertile Crescent to the Yucatan peninsula, past civilizations made the fatal mistake of assuming that good weather would continue. An abrupt shift to drought in Mesopotamia 4,200 years ago probably spelled the doom of the Akkadian culture, which united city-states into the first known empire. Others see the fingerprints of climate in the collapse of the Mayans around 900 A.D., the disappearance of the Anasazi from the American Southwest a few centuries later and the end of Norse expansion into the New World in the 14th century. A recurrent pattern of history has been for civilizations to take root and flourish while the weather is good, only to fall when the weather suddenly changes.

You'd think that this history would put things in some perspective, reminding us that weather and climate have never been constant and are beyond human control. Quite the contrary. As reader Gayle Trotter notes:

These ancient civilizations did not assume good weather would continue. In fact, they had elaborate religious rituals (sometimes involving human sacrifice and infanticide) to attempt to influence the weather. I would argue that our current environmental policy is about as effective at influencing the weather as their ancient religious ceremonies, and indeed, environmentalism has become a new religion in our age.

Sure enough, Linden advises that you can help stop "warming the globe" by engaging in various rituals: "buy a fuel-efficient car; take mass transit; and, when you can, bicycle or walk to work."

There are any number of examples of Coulter-hate that one could find in the writings of the Left but this one from the Puffington Host rather amused me -- for a number of reasons:

1). The author, novelist Jane Smiley, was so overpowered by her Coulter-hate that she nowhere mentions in her diatribe whom she is actually talking about. That Ann Coulter is her subject is however a safe bet.

2). Ms Smiley doesn't quote a single thing that Coulter has said. She does not argue rationally at all. It is just one long spew of hate and abuse. But that is pretty normal on the Left.

3). Ms Smiley ends up making clear that it is really Americans as a whole whom she loathes. And that is pretty normal on the Left too, of course.

A few small excerpts from the allegedly smiley one:

"Americans aren't nice or decent people, and conservative, overtly patriotic Americans are even less decent and less nice...

She looks crazy and frantic, even in the few pictures I've seen of her online. She's losing weight, as if there's some kind of underlying pathology going on, as if she's eating herself up from inside. Fear and hatred and paranoia do take their toll...

... members of the mainstream culture must be enabling her for some reason of their own, and so we get back to the first principle--Americans, true patriotic red, white, and blue Americans like hate."

Excerpts from an interview with Patrick Hynes, author of "In Defense of the Religious Right"

Q: Quite a few people and even some bestselling books are saying the GOP is the party of theocracy. Any truth in this?

Hynes: None at all. Conservative Christians within the GOP don't agree on their theology, so to say they are trying to establish a theocracy is an ignorant smear.

Q: During your research, did you come across genuine American theocrats equivalent to the Iranian mullahs?

Hynes: No. The claim that conservative Christians in America are akin to the Iranian mullahs is an update to a similar smear that surfaced after September 11th - back then, the Religious Right was likened almost daily to the Taliban. This much is true: no matter the point in history, liberal pundits and extremist politicians will compare conservative Christians in America to whichever Islamo-fascist regime threatens to kill innocent Americans.

Q: How much impact will the Religious Right have in this November's midterm election? How much in '08?

Hynes: It is too soon to tell whether the Religious Right will engage the 2006 election with the same fervor it engaged the 2004 election or if conservative Christians-demoralized by the ineffectiveness of the Republican majority in Washington-will say home. Social issues or, if you prefer, "moral values" issues generally play a greater role in our public dialogue during a campaign than during the congressional session. They will so again this year and that fact will motivate many Christians to vote. If it motivates them as powerfully as in the past, their voice will dominate the public dialogue again this election year. If not, Republicans will probably lose their majority.

Hynes: Conservatives have their elites, too. And, of course, there are different kinds of conservatives. But those who dismiss the Religious Right do so out of ignorance, I believe. These folks generally operate under old, worn out stereotypes and believe polite society would be embarrassed if Christians were to represent the public face of conservatism. This mind set is the mirror image of the "conservative Christians = Iranian mullahs" strain of liberalism. There is this idea, held by elites on both sides, that conservative Christians hurt the GOP as much as they help it. This is demonstrably untrue, as my book shows.

David Hicks, the knockabout larrikin Muslim insurgent from the outback, who is still cooling his heels in Gitmo, has now been granted British citizenship on the basis of his ol' dear Mum's birthplace bein' the ole Blighty, see?

Now, the UK have said that because Hicks was a dinky-di ocker when he was caught gallivanting around northern Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance in 2002, they can't be arsed asking for him back, like they did with the rest of the home-grown British terrorist scum. As for Australia's view? He's the UK's problem now, the Hicks family wanted it like that, now they have to deal with the consequences.

The Australian Government has backed Britain's decision, with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer saying he had briefings with the British Government during his visit to London.

"It's really nothing to do with us," Mr Downer told ABC radio from London today.

The minister's comments angered Mr Hicks, who implored the Australian Government to follow other governments and press for the release of their citizens from Guantanamo Bay.

"I'm getting used to Mr Downer's cynical remarks, he's almost gloating," Mr Hicks said. "I find it strange that he is in London when the British announce their decision, he may have gone over to dig a hole for David.

Last week John Kerry revealed his plan to "redeploy" U.S. forces from Iraq. This plan is different from fellow Defeaticrat Jack Murtha's plan to "redeploy" U.S. forces from Iraq to Okinawa, which Congressman Murtha seems to think is in the general neighborhood of Iraq. Iraq's in the Middle East, Okinawa's in the Far East: C'mon, how far can it be to get from the Far to the Middle? After all, the distance between the farthest fringe of the kook left and the center of the Democratic Party seems to be closing up every week.

Anyway, Sen. Kerry doesn't want to waste time "redeploying" to Okinawa. When America "redeploys," it's not going to take a connecting flight via Japan and risk its luggage getting "redeployed" to Bratislava. No, sir, in John Kerry's America, we "redeploy" nonstop, straight back to Main Street in time for the Redeployment Day parade.

You gotta hand it to these guys: "Redeployment" is ingenious. I'll bet the focus-group consultants were delirious: "surrender," "lose,","scram," "scuttle ignominiously," "head for the hills" all polled poorly, but "redeploy" surveyed well with all parts of the base, except the base in Okinawa, where they preferred "sayonara" -- that's "redeploy" in any language. The Defeaticrats have a clear message for the American people. Read da ploy: No new quagmires.

In a sense, the Democrats have already psychologically redeployed. Last week they unveiled their "New Direction for America." It's a six-point plan, two of whose points are "Cut College Costs" and "Ensure Dignified Retirement." On the first point, it's true the education system remains a problem: Many hardworking Americans are trapped in low-paying dead-end jobs as U.S. congressmen because an inadequate education left them with the impression Okinawa's in the United Arab Emirates. On the second point, I'm all in favor of a "dignified retirement": Why not try it on Kerry as a pilot program? As for the other four points, none has anything to say about national security or foreign policy.

Not content with slashing and burning the Defeaticrats, he flings gasoline and lit matches all round.

Today, lots of experts crank out analyses positing China as the unstoppable hegemon of the 21st century. But the real threat is not the strengths of your enemies but their weaknesses. China is a weak power: Its population will get old before it gets rich. Russia is a weak power: If Africa has health crises, the Middle East has Islamists and North Korea has nukes, then Russia's got the lot: a dying population whose men have a lower life expectancy than Bangladeshis with a Muslim separatist movement sitting on top of the biggest pile of nukes on the planet. Europe is a weak power, remorselessly evolving month by month into Eurabia.

Islam is a weak power: In the words of Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, one of the least worst Muslim nations in the world, "We produce practically nothing on our own, we can do almost nothing for ourselves, we cannot even manage our wealth." But in Iran they're working full-speed on nukes that will be able to hit every European city.

North Korea is a weak power: Its population is starving but it's about to "test" the latest variation on its aptly named No Dong missile. I mean "test" in the sense that I test my new shotgun by firing it through your kitchen window. They're going to launch it and see where it comes down -- maybe Tokyo, maybe San Diego; maybe they'll aim for Los Angeles but it'll fall in Vancouver. Hey, that's why we call it a "test," right?

Leftists, socialists and Islamists, all wrapped up into one nice little ball and kicked into the bin.

For some reason that seems to boil down to no more than a desire to upset people, the Left have a campaign going to remove references to American Indians in the names of sporting teams. Such names were once widely used to represent toughness, bravery etc.

The city of Portage in Wisconsin has long had a baseball team called the "Warriors" which used an Indian logo as an example of a warrior -- but that had to go.

Rather than change the team name, however, the team changed its logo -- to an image of an armoured knight from European history. That has however produced some derision. One good comment:

"Well, the current logo certainly has nothing to do with the local heritage of the community. I never saw a 16th century knight depicted in any of our local history books or photos. I saw American Indian warriors and pioneers. Knights? I don't think so.

Some of my ancestors were American Indian. Again, I feel the former logo depicted the local heritage respectfully, not this silly looking Knight (Tin Man) with a weapon...

My opinion is this: If the logo is tasteful, respectful and complements our heritage, what is wrong with it? The former logo was a work of art. It depicted a proud American Indian warrior chief. To look at his eyes, you can feel the pride, confidence, stern in thought and heritage. Now, all I see is a Tin Man holding a sword with a "P" on his shield. What does that have to do with our local heritage and pride? Nothing".

Associate Professor of law Andrew Fraser will provide the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission today with documentary evidence supporting his complaint of political discrimination against Macquarie University.

In July 2005, Professor Fraser wrote a controversial letter to the Parramatta Sun in which he suggested that large-scale immigration from black Africa could lead to increasing levels of crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems.

Almost immediately, Macquarie University was subjected to intense political pressure from black African organisations, the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and many other "anti-racist" activist groups and individuals demanding that Professor Fraser be sacked.

Soon after returning from overseas, the then Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Di Yerbury declared that Professor Fraser's view were "repugnant" to her, offering a series of apologies on behalf of the University to African migrant groups.

The Vice-Chancellor also sought to procure Professor Fraser's immediate resignation, offering to buy out his one-year pre-retirement contract which is due to terminate on June 30, 2006. When Professor Fraser declined that offer, the University immediately cancelled his classes and suspended him from teaching.

Shortly thereafter, the University lent its weight to an organised campaign of political intimidation aimed at Professor Fraser. It sponsored a "Racism Within" forum (really a latter-day Stalinist show-trial) where hundreds of Macquarie academics and students gathered to denounce Professor Fraser's alleged "extreme racism" in terms bordering on the hysterical.

Despite assurances from his Dean that Professor Fraser would be permitted to resume teaching once Professor Yerbury had resigned in early February 2006, the University cancelled his classes once again in the first semester of the current academic year.

The decision to suspend Professor Fraser this year was taken explicitly because his political views on race were deemed likely to influence his approach to the subject he was set to teach; namely, American Constitutional History.

Professor Fraser will be retiring from Macquarie University at the end of this week. Unlike other academic retirees who intend to remain research-active, he has been denied the status of an Honorary Associate which would entitle him to library privileges facilitating research into his next book on Anglophobia: Its Causes and Cure. That petty academic vindictiveness is the latest step in a year-long campaign of discrimination by the University against his political heresies.

In a case of turnabout is fair play, Professor Fraser also has lodged a complaint against the Parramatta Sun and its editor Charles Boag. The Human Rights Commission declared Professor Fraser's observations on black crime to be an unlawful form of racial vilification. But the same issue of the Parramatta Sun that published Professor Fraser's allegedly "racist" letter carried a signed editorial by Charles Boag asserting that it is mere "fantasy" to worry about black crime in light of the notorious record of "murder and mayhem on a great scale" committed by white Europeans, here in Australia and elsewhere in the world.

Professor Fraser looks forward to finding out whether the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission is, as advertised, a neutral and impartial investigative body. He hopes that a double standard will not be applied by the Commission allowing white Europeans to be subjected to wholesale "racial vilification" while suffering blatant political discrimination whenever they protest the loss of their freedoms and their ancestral homelands.

In their hatred of their own society, a persistent Leftist theme has been the myth of the "Noble savage" (Rousseau's term). Reality would have made "warlike" or "murderous" a better adjective than "noble" for most primitive people but Leftists are driven by their fantasies, not by reality.

Australia has a bunch of just the sort of folk Leftists idealize -- stone-age black people rudely wrenched into the wider world by the arrival of the British in 1788. And modern Australia has plenty of fantasy-driven Leftists too. So the fantasists concerned (notable among them being the late "Nugget" Coombes) managed some decades ago to reverse Australia's long-standing policy of assimilating the aborigines concerned into white society. The do-gooders managed to send about half of the blacks off to isolated and undeveloped places near their ancestral homelands where they could live in communal splendour according to their own ways and value systems. They were also of course given unconditional welfare so were not obliged to work. Big god Gubmint would look after them and supply all their needs. Nugget and all the other do-gooders went to bed every night after that basking in the warm glow of what a wonderfully kind and enlightened thing they had done.

But what did they expect the blacks to do? There was virtually nothing they could do in their isolated camps. They could certainly not get jobs there and with no need to hunt or plant they could not even gain the self-respect of supporting themselves and their families by their own efforts.

So they drank -- and any substance that could be abused they abused. They sank into a life not too different from some conceptions of hell. When they were not too stoned out of their brains for it, fistfights became a daily occurrence among them, black women were savagely beaten as a matter of routine and sexual abuse of children became so rife that you now have black toddlers with sexually transmitted diseases.

All that has now at long last gained the attention of the Australian media and there have been numerous articles about it in all the papers. And none of it was news to me or to the lady in my life. I grew up with a black's camp just down the other end of the street and the lady in my life has spent years working in isolated Aboriginal communities as a child-health nurse and general medical carer. On Sunday, however, I did put up three articles from the papers about the situation in the aboriginal communities and in response to that I received an interesting email which I reproduce below.

"I'm following your posts concerning Aboriginal sexual abuse with interest. We lived and worked in a number of Aboriginal communities for years. As an RN working in remote clinics I found it endlessly frustrating to be surrounded by evidence of abuse yet unable to do any more than treat the effects. There was enormous pressure to not "make waves" or become involved in any way and it was made very plain that any RN who did so would be promptly removed from the community.

Evidence of STDs (or any other evidence of abuse) in young children was passed on to the Sexual Health Team (in the NT) and they were supposed to deal with it. To the best of my knowledge this information was never passed on the the police for follow-up action. I was never asked for further information but instead given repeated warnings not to become involved.

There's no discernible effort to bring the perpetrators of sexual abuse to justice, not at any level. The communities --through fear or complicity--maintain a wall of silence, the police have little or no information to enable them to act (even if they were prepared to, which I strongly doubt) and the Health Department had no effective program in place to identify at-risk kids and remove them from the community.

Interestingly, the lower the standard of accommodation for visiting health teams, the less likely we were to see them. The problem isn't fixable.

Sadly, I have to agree with the lady. I don't think the problem is fixable either. And I think most people who know the situation well would be inclined to agree. Paternalism would help alleviate the situation but the outraged screams of the Left at any such idea will probably make the political cost too high for the Australian government to do much in that direction. The "equality" mythology of the Left has effectively consigned the Aborigines to hell and that is where they will stay.

Somalia's Islamic Courts, which control Mogadishu, have created a new power structure in which a leading Islamist wanted by the US is to play a key role.

Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys - who is on Washington's list of terrorists with alleged links to al-Qaeda - will head an 88-strong legislative council. Sheikh Aweys, a prominent cleric, is seen as more radical. He previously headed an armed group, al-Itihaad al-Islamiya, which the US said had links with al-Qaeda.

The network of 11 Islamic courts has been set up in recent years in Mogadishu, funded by businessmen in an attempt to re-establish law and order. The courts' stated goal is to restore a system of Sharia law and put an end to impunity and fighting.

Where else did we also have a system of Sharia Law, and all its associated benefits, which led to lots of leftist squealing, and surprisingly, even louder leftist squealing when the hated America went to thrash the jihadis and liberate the country.

Looks like, when the marines are done in Iraq and the afore mentioned country they'll have to go and clean up the mess left by weak kneed leftists (Clinton, cut-and-run-to-Okinawa Murtha etc) in Somalia.

The russians should know better. I wonder if they will be so opposed to the liberation of Iraq and supportive of the Iranians after this. May they rest in peace.

Insurgents in Iraq say they have killed four Russian embassy workers kidnapped at the start of June. The Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group incorporating al-Qaeda in Iraq, released an internet video and a statement announcing their deaths.

The video showed one man being beheaded and another shot dead, as well as the body of a third, but there was no sign of the fourth hostage.

The Kremlin said it could not immediately confirm their deaths. The men were seized in Baghdad on 3 June, and kidnappers said the executions were in revenge for "torture, killing and displacement by the infidel Russian government" in Chechnya.

No point siding with the jihadis, no point making compromises, not supporting America will not buy you friends, only temporary solace.

The Federal Government is considering tying welfare payments to school attendance and nourishment at home as part of its response to the social crisis in Aboriginal communities. The idea has been endorsed by Treasurer Peter Costello ahead of tomorrow's summit of state and federal indigenous affairs ministers, called to find ways of combating violence and child sexual assault blighting many remote settlements. The summit is also expected to consider garnishing welfare payments for parents who are substance abusers. Under the proposal, part of their payments would be held by the Government and directed towards their children's welfare.

Mr Costello said there had been "no shortage of money spent on Aboriginal affairs". "Like any other people, they get family tax benefits and CDEP (Community Development Employment Projects). In addition to that, they get much higher per-capita spending on health and education, yet they're still suffering from great hardships. "What we've proven is that simply shovelling money at these problems is not necessarily the answer. "One option is to tie that money to health and education outcomes much more carefully. For example, making family benefits payments payable only if the parents' kids are going to school. "You could also make family benefits payments conditional on the kids being properly nourished. It's no good if the money is being spent on grog and gambling."

Mr Costello said he'd been convinced to try the scheme by Cape York Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson. He said the Government had set aside money for pilot schemes tying welfare to health and education in the Cape. But in the wake of a controversial call by Health Minister Tony Abbott for a "new paternalism" in Aboriginal affairs, Mr Costello said his plan would apply to all welfare recipients. He said it would probably work better in Aboriginal communities, where leaders were able to identify families in need.

Below are some of the abstracts from the academic journal Intelligence. Although the articles concerned do of course assume a considerable academic background in the subject, I am optimistic that many readers here would be able to get the drift of the articles concerned. If you find the few papers I have grabbed below to be interesting, log on and read the rest.

Exponential correlation of IQ and the wealth of nations: "Plots of mean IQ and per capita real Gross Domestic Product for groups of 81 and 185 nations, as collected by Lynn and Vanhanen, are best fitted by an exponential function of the form: GDP = a * 10b*(IQ), where a and b are empirical constants. Exponential fitting yields markedly higher correlation coefficients than either linear or quadratic. The implication of exponential fitting is that a given increment in IQ, anywhere along the IQ scale, results in a given percentage in GDP, rather than a given dollar increase as linear fitting would predict. As a rough rule of thumb, an increase of 10 points in mean IQ results in a doubling of the per capita GDP."

Testing the cross-racial generality of Spearman's hypothesis in two samples : "Spearman's hypothesis states that racial differences in IQ between Blacks (B) and Whites (W) are due primarily to differences in the g factor. This hypothesis is often confirmed, but it is less certain whether it generalizes to other races. We therefore tested its cross-racial generality by comparing American subjects of European descent (W) to American Hispanics (H) in two different databases. The first [Centers for Disease Control (1988). Health status of Vietnam veterans. Journal of the American Medical Association 259, 2701-2719; Centers for Disease Control (1989). Health status of Vietnam veterans: Vol IV. Psychological and neuropsychological evaluation. Atlanta, Georgia: Center for Environmental Health and Injury Control] contains 4462 middle-aged Armed Services Veterans males, and the second database (NLSY1979) holds 11,625 young male and female adults. Both samples are fairly representative of the general American population. Race differences in general intelligence g were calculated and vectors of test scores were correlated with the vectors of the tests' g loadings, following Jensen [Jensen, A. R. (1998). The g factor. Westport, CT: Praeger]. W scored about 0.8 S.D. above H. The racial difference on the tests correlated significantly with the g-loadings of the tests in the VES database, but less so in the NLSY database. We therefore conclude that the present study supports, but does not unequivocally verify, the cross-racial generality of the Spearman's hypothesis."

g and the measurement of Multiple Intelligences: A response to Gardner : "Specifically, Gardner questioned the construct validity of g, and suggested that the measures we used to test his theory were contaminated with verbal and logical demands. In this reply, we explain that the construct validity of g is well established, pointing out (a) that g is expressed in a wide variety of tasks (not all of which are "school-like" tasks), (b) that g predicts many important criterion variables (not only academic achievement), and (c) that g has a well-established biological basis. With regard to the measures used in our study, we point out that the verbal content of those tasks is unlikely to contribute to individual differences in task performance, and that the logical content of those tasks is consistent with Gardner's description of his intelligence domains.

On the high intelligence and cognitive achievements of Jews in Britain: "A number of studies in the United States have found that Jews obtain higher average IQs than white gentiles. This paper examines whether this is also the case in Britain. Three early studies are summarized that found that Jews in Britain have mean IQs in the range of 110-113. New data are presented for two nationally representative samples of 7-16 year olds in which Jews had mean IQs of 108.5 and 107.7. Taking all five studies into account, it is proposed that the best reading of the IQ of Jews in Britain is 110. It is proposed that the best reading of the IQ of Jews in the United States is 109.5. Data are presented for the numbers of Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society in relation to their proportion in the population. It is found that Jews were over-represented by a factor of 3.7 in the years 1901 through 1940 and by a factor of 7.6 in the years 1950 through 2003. Data are also presented for the numbers Jewish Nobel prize-winners in Britain and the United States for 1901 through 2003. It is shown that Jews are over-represented among Nobel prize-winners by a factor of 8.0 in Britain and 12.3 in the United States. It is proposed that the over-representation of Jews among Nobel prize-winners can be partly explained by the higher average Jewish IQ.

For slightly easier reading, Chris Brand has just done another installment of his news about IQ

A probable future King of Denmark -- with his Australian mother. The marriage of Mary Donaldson to Prince Frederik has generated phenomenal goodwill between Australia and Denmark

He's Crown Princess Mary's bouncing baby boy. With rosy chubby cheeks and cute potbelly, the robust eight-month-old proved a crowd-pleaser when shown off by his proud parents from the decks of the royal yacht. Rugged up in a sky-blue knitted jumper, Prince Christian seemed to almost swamp svelte Princess Mary when she held him up for the crowd.

It was one of the young heir's rare public appearances, made after the royal family arrived in the Danish port city of Ronne last week. The family travelled by boat to the Baltic Sea island of Bornholm for a short visit, where they toured attractions and greeted residents. Wearing a wide-brimmed ochre felt hat and a smart tailored suit, Tasmanian-born Princess Mary was accompanied by husband Crown Prince Frederik, who was dressed in full naval regalia. No date for an Australian visit by the royal family has yet been confirmed but some suggest it may take place later this year.

It's not unusual that I find myself disagreeing with a democrat. But this time it's really ironic.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale says he supports a pre-emptive U.S. strike against a North Korean missile that is raising nuclear fears around the globe.

. . .

Mondale said on WCCO-AM Friday that the United States should tell North Korea "defuel that missile. It has three boosters. Dismantle it and put it back in the sheds. Because if you're getting ready to fire this, we'll take it out."

. . .

Mondale and other former top Democrats are convinced apparently that action is the key to ending the standoff.

"This is such a legitimate thing for the United States to do," Mondale said. "The nature of the threat is so serious that I think we should knock it out right there if they won't stop."

Didn't that guy die? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's still alive, but I though I'd heard that he died a while back.

I'm against shooting down the missile. Firing a test missile, assuming they aim it at international waters, is provocative as Condoleezza Rice said. But it is not an act of war. Shooting a test missile down is an act of war. We don't need to escalate this latest confrontation with North Korea into a hot war.

I'm not sure whether Mondale thinks we can shoot the missile out of the sky or whether he thinks we should hit it before it launches. In the audio, he said that

. . . one missile like the one that took out Zarqawi could take out this [the North Korean] missile.

I'll cut the old man some slack, but he seems to have forgotten that we used bombs to kill Zarqawi, not missiles.

Now if we were to blow up the test missile on the ground, we would ignite a shit storm of unimaginable proportions. North Korea would be able to claim justification for some kind of retaliation, and the world might start calling us the rogue state. I would not be surprised if the UN Security Council met to discuss sanctions against the US.

If we were to shoot the missile out of the sky, we'd run the risk that our anti-missile missile might miss. That would be worse than doing nothing. Our anti-missile technology is far from perfect. The task has often been described as "hitting a bullet with a bullet." If we were to try for the Korean missile, we could not afford to miss. And I don't care for the odds.

However, if we let the North Koreans shoot their wad, we can monitor its performance much better than even they can. We'll gain important intelligence on their capabilities, both in missile technology and in electronic missile tracking. (Since they'll be watching the missile, we'll be able to watch their radars.) Diplomatically, we can use their "provocative act" against them if and when we need international support for action in the future.

I say, complain about it, but if they're determined to test their missile, don't stop them.

Rape of ten year old kept quiet for three weeks by child safety authorities

Just blacks being blacks, you know (!)

The Queensland Government is investigating allegations that child safety authorities failed to alert police that a 10-year-old girl was repeatedly raped in a Cape York community. Child Safety Minister Mike Reynolds has ordered his department's ethical standards unit to investigate the allegations that the matter was known about for three weeks before police were notified.

Acting Premier Anna Bligh said today the Government was "very concerned" by the allegations and would take every step to get to the bottom of the incident. "Any allegations (about) possible harm to children should be reported to the appropriate authorities, including where appropriate police, as soon as that comes to their attention," Ms Bligh said. "Clearly children need government departments to be acting co-operatively, whether it is Child Safety, Queensland Health, Queensland Police or any other agencies that this matter might come to their attention." Ms Bligh said the matter would be referred to the Crime and Misconduct Commission if the investigation recommended as such.

But Opposition leader Lawrence Springborg said an internal investigation would not suffice. "There needs to be a proper independent investigation of this and the information in the report should be made publicly available," Mr Springborg said. He said only two and a half years ago Premier Peter Beattie had called a state election in order to protect the kids. "If children under the supervision, or with the knowledge of the Department of Child Safety, had been repeatedly raped for three weeks ... I can just say that in Queensland things have got decidedly worse."

The Northern Territory Government has launched an inquiry into child sex abuse in indigenous communities after allegations of pedophilia and sex slavery. The ABC's Lateline program last night broadcast allegations that indigenous men in central Australia were keeping girls as young as five as sex slaves. An unnamed former youth worker at Mutitjulu, near Uluru, said some men were were offering young girls petrol to sniff in exchange for sex. The worker said he had been intimidated by the alleged abusers into withdrawing his complaints to police. "It's true that there are predatory men in the central deserts who are systematically abusing young children," he said. The NT Government yesterday announced an inquiry into child sex abuse across the territory's Aboriginal communities, while police vowed to investigate the allegations involving Mutitjulu, where petrol sniffing is rife. "It's time to break through the fear, silence and shame about what's happening in the bush," NT Chief Minister Clare Martin said. "Too many families are being destroyed by child abuse. We must draw a line in the sand and get all the facts and act on them."

Sexually transmitted diseases are spreading rapidly through Australia's indigenous toddlers and children as the hidden tragedy of child abuse becomes a broader health crisis for the nation. With federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough standing by his claim that pedophile rings are operating in central Australia, Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin yesterday ordered an inquiry into the abuse of children in Australia's most disadvantaged communities. But new figures reveal child abuse and poor indigenous health is not confined to the Territory, with the number of Aboriginal children in Western Australia infected with STDs doubling in the past five years.

According to West Australian Health Department statistics, 708 children under 14 had been infected with the diseases since 2001. And almost 80 per cent of the victims were Aboriginal. Of those, 19 were toddlers and preschoolers under the age of four. In the Kimberley region in the state's far northwest, four children aged under four had been infected with chlamydia or gonorrhoea last year. STD rates are also high in other states, as the culture of silence over sexual abuse, coupled with a lack of support services and indigenous disadvantage, continues to blight the next generation of Aboriginal men and women.

While The Australian and other media outlets have been casting light on the issue for years, doubts remain over the official response to the crisis, with the NSW Government under fire yesterday for sitting on a damning report on Aboriginal child abuse and the Queensland Government investigating claims its child safety department was too slow to respond to complaints a 10-year-old girl had been raped on Cape York.

Ms Martin is today expected to name the head of the NT inquiry she hopes will "break through the fear and the shame and the silence we see about child sex abuse in our communities". "We have failed to prosecute child sex abuse," Ms Martin said yesterday. "We have failed because we couldn't get people to come forward as witnesses. Police have done work in those communities and we can't get the evidence, we can't get people to step forward - and that's what this inquiry is about."

Mr Brough, who has called a summit on indigenous disadvantage for Monday, last night declared the victims could not wait for another inquiry to report. "You would hope that anything that is going to shine the light on what is a desperate situation is positive but what we need right now is action and that's what I hope to achieve in co-operation with the states and territories on Monday," Mr Brough said.

Melva Kennedy, a member of the Aboriginal Child Sexual Assault Task Force in NSW, said it was a misconception that systematic sexual abuse within indigenous communities was confined to remote areas. "It happens all over the place, all over Australia, not just the outback" said Ms Kennedy, who has worked in the field of child protection for the past 20 years. "I know of incidents of sexual abuse in communities in the cities, in country towns, and in the outback."

The NT inquiry was called amid a heated row between Mr Brough and territory authorities over allegations of child abuse at Mutitjulu, an Aboriginal community in the shadow of Uluru that the Chief Minister describes as one of the most dysfunctional in the Northern Territory. Mr Brough claimed his department had sent a "full report" to NT police about the Mutitjulu allegations raised on Wednesday night on the ABC's Lateline.

But Deputy Police Commissioner Bruce Wernham said yesterday that Alice Springs police had only received an anonymous fax in February that contained "general intelligence", was unsigned and written on a plain piece of paper. Mr Wernham said police had been aware of some of the allegations but could not gather enough evidence to act. He said just four cases of sexual abuse had been reported at Mutitjulu since 2002, including one involving children. "An allegation is one thing, but following that up and getting hard evidence is totally another," he said. "That's where we really rely on the goodwill of individuals." Mr Brough last night defended his actions and maintained that police were able to use information he passed on as intelligence. Police have formed a taskforce to investigate the claims at Mutitjulu.

In NSW, Attorney-General Bob Debus is still sitting on a report, delivered to the Government three months ago, on Aboriginal child sexual abuse in NSW. The report is understood to find that child sexual assault has reached "epidemic proportions" in Aboriginal communities in NSW, and is four times more prevalent than in the general community. It says the assaults have led to high levels of mental illness in communities, but that victims rarely come forward due to fear of retribution. Ms Kennedy, a member of the taskforce that produced the report, said she was frustrated at the lack of action.

Despite publicity over the Cape York case in Queensland, and claims violence has gone unchecked in the state's indigenous communities, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie yesterday said his Government had already held an inquiry into the abuse of Aboriginal children and would not convene a second one. Mr Beattie said the inquiry by Tony Fitzgerald led to alcohol management plans and that a forum and a follow-up inquiry had also fostered a new child protection system.

I have been blogging since July 2002 and in all that time I cannot remember saying anything about the cars I drive -- which makes me a rather unusual male blogger, I think. So just to show that I am not totally weird, I think I will say a bit about that now as a Sunday reflection.

I have always been a demon driver. People who get into my car often emerge shaking. So I buy very small cars -- which enable me to flash through traffic down lanes that are not supposed to be there. I remember one occasion when I upset some guy in a big Ford without being aware of it and he decided to chase me to remonstrate with me. I was just driving in my normal way but it still stretched him to chase me. By the time he caught up with me he was too exhausted to say much to me. If I had been aware of him chasing me, he would never have caught up.

But the cars I drive are not powerful ones. Not at all ones that rev-heads like The Good Blair would approve of. My first car was a VW and those since have always been small and humble too. Though I did at one stage have a Mini K -- which was an Australian version of the Morris Mini Minor but with an 1100cc motor in it -- and did that thing go! There is NO car that is as much fun to drive as a Mini.

At the beginning of 2005, I had two cars -- a 1991 Ford Festiva (really a Korean-made Kia) and a 1995 Daihatsu Charade. The Festiva was as near as I had come to a Mini in terms of fun to drive. It was a real Go-Kart. But my son Joe was just starting university so I gave him the choice of which car he wanted to drive and he chose the Festiva. It was a VERY old car as small cars go, however, so at the beginning of this year the motor blew up and I reluctantly gave it away and gave Joe the Daihatsu instead.

I then bought a one-year-old ex-hire Toyota Echo off Hertz for myself. I had always thought that my Daihatsu was the easiest car to drive ever made but the Echo was even easier. If you see them being driven around the place they are almost always flying and that is because they are such a Swiss-watch of a car. They feel like a single thing to drive rather than a mechanical device.

But that was not enough. I have always wanted a really old car as well, and now that age has slowed me down I thought it was time. Vintage cars are of course wonderful but you virtually need to be a mechanic to keep them going so I have compromised on a veteran car -- and not such a veteran one at that. I have just bought a 1963 Humber Super Snipe off a family who had been driving it since new. It is a big old English car and, as such, bound to need lots of work to keep it going but I have a mechanic friend living just over the road so I think I can afford it! I remember that when they were new the Humbers were being advertised as being able to cruise on the open road at 100 mph but I am not going to try that. I am sure it would blow up if I tried it at this stage in its life.

The difference in handling of the two cars is of course enormous but I used to be a cab-driver many years ago so I am not bothered by big clumsy cars. The style of the Humber makes up for all else, in my view, particularly as the car has been very well-maintained and looks immaculate.

Collecting the Humber yesterday morning was rather fun. Everybody who heard about the impending purchase was enthusiastic and none more than an old friend who was born and bred in Coventry, England, where the Humber was built. The first car he ever drove was a Humber so he couldn't wait to see my Humber and came along with me to collect it. And my stepson Paul was equally enthusiastic. He and his wife drove us out to collect it and both were delighted by the car.

When we got the car home, we all had steak pies, teacake and tea on my verandah to celebrate.

Those good old "human rights" again. Criminals have a "right" to a police job?

A Federal civil rights watchdog has found the Victoria Police and the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority discriminated against a woman by refusing to employ her because she had a criminal record. In a report tabled in Parliament, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission found it was discriminatory to refuse to hire someone to answer phones because she had been convicted of drink-driving.

Tracy Gordon applied for the job of communications officer with the ESTA in August 2003. After a typing assessment she filled in an application form, which asked if she had a criminal record. She alleges a staff member then told her she was ineligible to go any further with the assessment because she had been convicted of drink-driving. Ms Gordon claims when she contacted Victoria Police about the issue she was told the authority had a rule that anyone with a criminal conviction could not be hired.

But commission president John von Doussa found Ms Gordon was discriminated against because she did not need to reach the same standard of character and integrity as a police officer in order to answer phones. "I am of the view that if a person is convicted of an offence for driving whilst under the influence of alcohol, it does not mean that they fail to meet this lower level requirement," he said. ESTA and the police said they were considering the recommendations.

At long last, there's good news in the fight against "jackpot justice" tort claims and the nefarious law firms that file them. In courts and legislatures across the country, fraudulent lawsuits are being exposed, and the abusive tort lawyers that file them are finally getting a taste of their own medicine. Most notable is the recent indictment of Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, the nation's most notorious class-action law firm. For four decades, Milberg Weiss has filed hundreds of dubious class-action lawsuits and wrung billions of dollars from terrified companies.

Now, a federal grand jury in Los Angeles has indicted Milberg Weiss and individual partners on multiple counts of conspiracy, racketeering, obstruction of justice, mail fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. For over twenty years, according to the U.S. Attorney, the firm brazenly paid kickbacks to repeat plaintiffs in order to serve as lead counsel in class-action lawsuits. Worse, according to prosecutors, the firm continued to do so while aware that it was under investigation.

Long-known for overzealously employing "professional plaintiffs" to extort settlements and jury awards from companies (for example, individual defendant Seymour Lazar served as plaintiff in no fewer than seventy lawsuits), Milberg Weiss stands accused of the very type of misconduct that it wantonly alleged against companies and even entire industries. An even greater irony is that Milberg Weiss faces the same "death sentence" suffered by companies like Arthur Andersen, one of its frequent past targets.

Those of us who have witnessed Milberg Weiss's abusive tactics through the years can be forgiven for taking delight in seeing the chickens finally coming home to roost. As former Milberg Weiss mastermind Bill Lerach once said, "the whole industry was a fraud," and, "so much fraud, so little time." In the case of abusive class-action law firms like Milberg Weiss, we couldn't agree more.

In similar fashion, rail company and frequent asbestos-lawsuit target CSX has turned the tables against the law firm of Peirce, Raimond & Coulter, which had filed literally thousands of asbestos claims against CSX and other companies. CSX discovered that plaintiffs in one of Peirce's lawsuits fraudulently substituted each other's x-rays in order to duplicate advantageous diagnoses. Accordingly, CSX sued the employees, who confessed and testified that they asked Peirce attorneys to dismiss the lawsuit, but that Peirce nevertheless proceeded with the case. On that basis, CSX sued the Peirce firm for fraud, misrepresentation, and negligence, the very types of claims that Peirce had alleged in thousands of lawsuits. CSX further claims that Peirce maintained the x-rays and knew about the false diagnoses, and that it repeatedly retained a physician whom a federal court accused of manufacturing false silicosis diagnoses.

Seeing that black racism cannot exist (according to the Left) some examples of it seem of interest

With Congress poised to extend, for another quarter-century, certain "temporary" provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it's worth pondering some of the political mischief taking place these days in the name of "voting rights."

Take New York's 11th Congressional District, a safe Democratic seat covering several neighborhoods in ooklyn. The seat is currently occupied by Major Owens, a black Democrat who has held it since 1983 and is retiring this year. One of the four candidates to replace him is David Yassky, a white Democrat who represents some of the same ooklyn neighborhoods as a city councilman.

Mr. Owens has one of Congress's most liberal voting records, and there's nothing in the background of Mr. Yassky, a prot,g, of New York Senator Chuck Schumer, that suggests he would vote much differently. Even so, Mr. Owens and the three other candidates, all of whom are black, are on a mission to force Mr. Yassky out of the race. In the case of Mr. Owens, this has partly to do with the fact that his son is among those running in the September 12 Democratic primary. But Mr. Owens, the other black candidates and local black officials have stressed that their overriding concern is the color of Mr. Yassky's skin. And they're using the Voting Right Act to justify old-fashioned race-baiting.....

Representative Owens has labeled Mr. Yassky a "colonizer." Al Sharpton, ever the statesman, has called the candidate, who is Jewish, "greedy." And the New York Sun reported last week that Albert Vann, a city councilman who opposes Mr. Yassky's candidacy, sent an email to black elected officials nationwide announcing that "we are in peril of losing a 'Voting Rights' district . . . as a result of the well financed candidacy of Council Member David Yassky, a white individual."

Once again, its home grown terrorists, no, not poor desperate oppressed people lashing out at the evil America. If anyone is still unsure, there is a war going on people, its not drummed up by Bushitler and Oil executives in board rooms.

MIAMI — Seven people were arrested on terrorism conspiracy charges Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the United States, a federal law enforcement official said.

Officials told FOXNews the seven men were in the very early stages of planning an attack for what the planners thought was Al Qaeda, but the people they were working with were actually Department of Justice officials.

The target was supposedly the Sears Tower in Chicago, but officials said the suspects were also considering attacking FBI facilities and government buildings in Miami.

Officials told FOXNews that the suspects were plotting to wage jihad in conjunction with Al Qaeda and were having elaborate discussions, and that the suspects believed if they knocked down the Sears Tower, that they could effectively cripple the U.S. government.

Those arrested include five American citizens, one illegal alien from Haiti, and one resident alien. All are expected to be arraigned in U.S. District Court in Miami tomorrow morning.

I wonder if the liberals and some republicans will now listen to the American citizens and enforce their border protection laws and stop waffling around the hard decisions that have to be made.

I'm sure the left will cry innocent till proven guilty and lawyers and all that for these plotters, but don't expect the same cries from them for the soldiers who keep them safe though.

About

This blog is written solely by John Ray, who has a Ph.D. degree in psychology and 200+ papers published in the academic journals of the social sciences. It does occasionally comment on issues in psychology but is mainly aimed at giving a conservative psychologist's view on a broad range of topics. There are very few conservative psychologists. The blog originated in Australia and many (but not most) posts discuss Australian matters. Australians have an unusually good awareness of events outside their own country. Australian newspapers feature news from Britain and the USA not as an afterthought but as a major part of their coverage. So Australians do tend to have a truly Western heart, which is the reason behind the old name for this blog. So events in Australia, Britain and the USA all feature frequently here, plus occasional coverage of other places, particularly Israel.

A primer in American politics for non-Americans:

SCOTUS is the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land

The "GOP" stands for "Grand Old Party" and refers to the Republican party. The GOP is at present center/Right, while the Democrats have been undergoing a steady drift Leftwards and now have policies similar to mainstream European Leftist parties.

The ideological identity of both parties has however been very fluid -- almost reversing itself over time. In the mid 19th century, the GOP was the party of big government and concern for minorities while the Democrats advertised themselves as "The party of the white man" -- an orientation that lasted into the mid 20th century in the South. The Democrats are still obsessed with race but have now flipped into support for discrimination AGAINST whites.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Some brief observations about Leftism

As a good academic, I first define my terms: A Leftist is a person who is so dissatisfied with the way things naturally are that he/she is prepared to use force to make people behave in ways that they otherwise would not.

Leftists think that utopia can be coerced into existence -- so no dishonesty or brutality is beyond them in pursuit of that "noble" goal

Leftism is fundamentally authoritarian. Whether by revolution or by legislation, Leftists aim to change what people can and must do. When in 2008 Obama said that he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America, he was not talking about America's geography or topography but rather about American people. He wanted them to stop doing things that they wanted to do and make them do things that they did not want to do. Can you get a better definition of authoritarianism than that?

And note that an American President is elected to administer the law, not make it. That seems to have escaped Mr Obama

That Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian is not a new insight. It was well understood by none other than Friedrich Engels (Yes. THAT Engels). His excellent short essay On authority was written as a reproof to the dreamy Anarchist Left of his day. It concludes: "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means"

Evan Sayet: The Left sides "...invariably with evil over good, wrong over right, and the behaviors that lead to failure over those that lead to success." (t=5:35+ on video)

Some useful definitions:

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one. If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat. If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone. If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation. A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels. Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down. If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church. A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced. (Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!) If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it. A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.

Death taxes: You would expect a conscientious person, of whatever degree of intelligence, to reflect on the strange contradiction involved in denying people the right to unearned wealth, while supporting programs that give people unearned wealth.

America is no longer the land of the free. It is now the land of the regulated -- though it is not alone in that, of course

Envy is a strong and widespread human emotion so there has alway been widespread support for policies of economic "levelling". Both the USA and the modern-day State of Israel were founded by communists but reality taught both societies that respect for the individual gave much better outcomes than levelling ideas. Sadly, there are many people in both societies in whom hatred for others is so strong that they are incapable of respect for the individual. The destructiveness of what they support causes them to call themselves many names in different times and places but they are the backbone of the political Left

The large number of rich Leftists suggests that, for them, envy is secondary. They are directly driven by hatred and scorn for many of the other people that they see about them. Hatred of others can be rooted in many things, not only in envy. But the haters come together as the Left.

Leftists hate the world around them and want to change it: the people in it most particularly. Conservatives just want to be left alone to make their own decisions and follow their own values.

The failure of the Soviet experiment has definitely made the American Left more vicious and hate-filled than they were. The plain failure of what passed for ideas among them has enraged rather than humbled them.

Ronald Reagan famously observed that the status quo is Latin for “the mess we’re in.” So much for the vacant Leftist claim that conservatives are simply defenders of the status quo. They think that conservatives are as lacking in principles as they are.

The shallow thinkers of the Left sometimes claim that conservatives want to impose their own will on others in the matter of abortion. To make that claim is however to confuse religion with politics. Conservatives are in fact divided about their response to abortion. The REAL opposition to abortion is religious rather than political. And the church which has historically tended to support the LEFT -- the Roman Catholic church -- is the most fervent in the anti-abortion cause. Conservatives are indeed the one side of politics to have moral qualms on the issue but they tend to seek a middle road in dealing with it. Taking the issue to the point of legal prohibitions is a religious doctrine rather than a conservative one -- and the religion concerned may or may not be characteristically conservative. More on that here

The Leftist hunger for change to the society that they hate leads to a hunger for control over other people. And they will do and say anything to get that control: "Power at any price". Leftist politicians are mostly self-aggrandizing crooks who gain power by deceiving the uninformed with snake-oil promises -- power which they invariably use to destroy. Destruction is all that they are good at. Destruction is what haters do.

Leftists are consistent only in their hate. They don't have principles. How can they when "there is no such thing as right and wrong"? All they have is postures, pretend-principles that can be changed as easily as one changes one's shirt

A Leftist assumption: Making money doesn't entitle you to it, but wanting money does.

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money -- only for wanting to keep your own money." --columnist Joe Sobran (1946-2010)

I often wonder why Leftists refer to conservatives as "wingnuts". A wingnut is a very useful device that adds versatility wherever it is used. Clearly, Leftists are not even good at abuse. Once they have accused their opponents of racism and Nazism, their cupboard is bare. Similarly, Leftists seem to think it is a devastating critique to refer to "Worldnet Daily" as "Worldnut Daily". The poverty of their argumentation is truly pitiful

The Leftist assertion that there is no such thing as right and wrong has a distinguished history. It was Pontius Pilate who said "What is truth?" (John 18:38). From a Christian viewpoint, the assertion is undoubtedly the Devil's gospel

"If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Ludwig von Mises

Because of their need to be different from the mainstream, Leftists are very good at pretending that sow's ears are silk purses

Among people who should know better, Leftism is a character defect. Leftists HATE success in others -- which is why notably successful societies such as the USA and Israel are hated and failures such as the Palestinians can do no wrong.

A Leftist's beliefs are all designed to pander to his ego. So when you have an argument with a Leftist, you are not really discussing the facts. You are threatening his self esteem. Which is why the normal Leftist response to challenge is mere abuse.

Because of the fragility of a Leftist's ego, anything that threatens it is intolerable and provokes rage. So most Leftist blogs can be summarized in one sentence: "How DARE anybody question what I believe!". Rage and abuse substitute for an appeal to facts and reason.

Their threatened egos sometimes drive Leftists into quite desperate flights from reality. For instance, they often call Israel an "Apartheid state" -- when it is in fact the Arab states that practice Apartheid -- witness the severe restrictions on Christians in Saudi Arabia. There are no such restrictions in Israel.

Because their beliefs serve their ego rather than reality, Leftists just KNOW what is good for us. Conservatives need evidence.

“Absolute certainty is the privilege of uneducated men and fanatics.” -- C.J. Keyser

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

THE FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY HAS DONE MORE TO IMPEDE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT THAN ANY ONE THING KNOWN TO MANKIND -- ROUSSEAU

"Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him" (Proverbs 26: 12). I think that sums up Leftists pretty well.

Eminent British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington is often quoted as saying: "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine." It was probably in fact said by his contemporary, J.B.S. Haldane. But regardless of authorship, it could well be a conservative credo not only about the cosmos but also about human beings and human society. Mankind is too complex to be summed up by simple rules and even complex rules are only approximations with many exceptions.

Politics is the only thing Leftists know about. They know nothing of economics, history or business. Their only expertise is in promoting feelings of grievance

Socialism makes the individual the slave of the state – capitalism frees them.

MESSAGE to Leftists: Even if you killed all conservatives tomorrow, you would just end up in another Soviet Union. Conservatives are all that stand between you and that dismal fate.

Many readers here will have noticed that what I say about Leftists sometimes sounds reminiscent of what Leftists say about conservatives. There is an excellent reason for that. Leftists are great "projectors" (people who see their own faults in others). So a good first step in finding out what is true of Leftists is to look at what they say about conservatives! They even accuse conservatives of projection (of course).

The research shows clearly that one's Left/Right stance is strongly genetically inherited but nobody knows just what specifically is inherited. What is inherited that makes people Leftist or Rightist? There is any amount of evidence that personality traits are strongly genetically inherited so my proposal is that hard-core Leftists are people who tend to let their emotions (including hatred and envy) run away with them and who are much more in need of seeing themselves as better than others -- two attributes that are probably related to one another. Such Leftists may be an evolutionary leftover from a more primitive past.

Leftists seem to believe that if someone like Al Gore says it, it must be right. They obviously have a strong need for an authority figure. The fact that the two most authoritarian regimes of the 20th century (Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia) were socialist is thus no surprise. Leftists often accuse conservatives of being "authoritarian" but that is just part of their usual "projective" strategy -- seeing in others what is really true of themselves.

"Why should the German be interested in the liberation of the Jew, if the Jew is not interested in the liberation of the German?... We recognize in Judaism, therefore, a general anti-social element of the present time... In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism.... Indeed, in North America, the practical domination of Judaism over the Christian world has achieved as its unambiguous and normal expression that the preaching of the Gospel itself and the Christian ministry have become articles of trade... Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist". Who said that? Hitler? No. It was Karl Marx. See also here and here and here. For roughly two centuries now, antisemitism has, throughout the Western world, been principally associated with Leftism (including the socialist Hitler) -- as it is to this day. See here.

Leftists call their hatred of Israel "Anti-Zionism" but Zionists are only a small minority in Israel

Some of the Leftist hatred of Israel is motivated by old-fashioned antisemitism (beliefs in Jewish "control" etc.) but most of it is just the regular Leftist hatred of success in others. And because the societies they inhabit do not give them the vast amount of recognition that their large but weak egos need, some of the most virulent haters of Israel and America live in those countries. So the hatred is the product of pathologically high self-esteem.

"With their infernal racial set-asides, racial quotas, and race norming, liberals share many of the Klan's premises. The Klan sees the world in terms of race and ethnicity. So do liberals! Indeed, liberals and white supremacists are the only people left in America who are neurotically obsessed with race. Conservatives champion a color-blind society" -- Ann Coulter

Who said this in 1968? "I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the Left and is now in the centre of politics". It was Sir Oswald Mosley, founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists

The term "Fascism" is mostly used by the Left as a brainless term of abuse. But when they do make a serious attempt to define it, they produce very complex and elaborate definitions -- e.g. here and here. In fact, Fascism is simply extreme socialism plus nationalism. But great gyrations are needed to avoid mentioning the first part of that recipe, of course.

Politicians are in general only a little above average in intelligence so the idea that they can make better decisions for us that we can make ourselves is laughable

A quote from the late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931–2005: "You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

A lesson in Australian: When an Australian calls someone a "big-noter", he is saying that the person is a chronic and rather pathetic seeker of admiration -- as in someone who often pulls out "big notes" (e.g. $100.00 bills) to pay for things, thus endeavouring to create the impression that he is rich. The term describes the mentality rather than the actual behavior with money and it aptly describes many Leftists. When they purport to show "compassion" by advocating things that cost themselves nothing (e.g. advocating more taxes on "the rich" to help "the poor"), an Australian might say that the Leftist is "big-noting himself". There is an example of the usage here. The term conveys contempt. There is a wise description of Australians generally here

Heritage is what survives death: Very rare and hence very valuable

Two lines below of a famous hymn that would be incomprehensible to Leftists today ("honor"? "right"? "freedom?" Freedom to agree with them is the only freedom they believe in)

First to fight for right and freedom,
And to keep our honor clean

It is of course the hymn of the USMC -- still today the relentless warriors that they always were.

If any of the short observations above about Leftism seem wrong, note that they do not stand alone. The evidence for them is set out at great length in a MONOGRAPH on Leftism.

You can email me (John Ray) here (Hotmail address). In emailing me, you can address me as "John", "Jon", "Dr. Ray" or "JR" and that will be fine -- but my preference is for "JR"

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)